386 
KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
few of them are of special significance. The seventeenth inscription, by turning 
it into English, reads as follows : 
"Sebastian Cabot, captain and pilot-major of his sacred imperial Majesty, 
the Emperor Don Carlos, the fifth of his name, and the king our lord, made this 
figure extended on a plane surface, in the year of the birth of our Savior Jesus 
Christ, 1544, having drawn it by degrees of latitude and longitude, with the 
winds, as a sailing chart, following partly Ptolemy and partly the modern discov- 
eries, Spanish and Portuguese, and partly the discovery made by his father and 
himself; by it you may sail as by a sea chart, having regard to the variation of 
the needle," etc. 
Then follows a discussion relative to the variation of the needle, which Se- 
bastian Cabot claimed to have first noticed. Here we have the declaration that 
the map was made by Sebastian Cabot, pilot-major of the Emperor Charles V., 
and in the year 1544, at which time we know he was living in Spain and held 
that ofiice. And this is accompanied by the statement that, in making the map, 
he was guided by the discoveries of his father, John Cabot, and himself. De- 
scription No. 8 reads thus : "This country was discovered by John Cabot, a 
Venetian, and Sebastian Cabot, his son, in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
MCCCCXCIV (1494), and on the 24th of June, in the morning, which land they 
called ' prima vista,' and a large island adjacent to it they named the Island of 
St. John, because they discovered it on the same day," etc. 
EDITORIAL NOTES. 
The first meeting of the winter session of 
the Kansas City Academy of Science was 
quite well attended and several new members 
were added to the list. The opening address 
was delivered by Mr. Ermine Case, the sub- 
ject being The National Museum at Naples. 
It was extreniely instructive and interesting, 
and will be published in full in the November 
Review. 
The Academy is now in its eighth year, 
and has, through the efforts of a few citizens, 
attained a recognized position among the 
scientific institutions of the country. Many 
of I he papers read before it and published in 
the Review have been copied in standard 
periodicals, both in this country and Europe, 
as valuable contributions to scientific litera- 
ture, while its cabinet and library are cred- 
itable to it, as far as they go. 
In view of the value of such lectures and 
such collections to a community, especially 
to so busy an one as this, it seems strange that 
they are not more freely made use of by our 
citizens, who can thus so easily keep pace 
with the scientific progress of the day. In 
a utilitarian point of view, when so many 
persons are prospecting in this vicinity for 
coal, iron, lead, and other minerals, a full 
set of fossils and geological specimens is a 
key to the locality, and may direct the work 
of the miner or save him much labor and 
money. 
With such things in view, aside from the 
general information to be gained from con- 
nection with such a society, it would seem 
that our business men, our capitalists, our 
teachers, and our intelligent class generally, 
should foster it and with alacrity and enthu- 
